design initiatief’s future telling

Research based foresight & exploration of high level design futures

Design Initiative
Design Initiative (Design Initiatief) is an organization supported by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs which strives to make The Netherlands more innovative and entrepreneurial. Convinced that ‘design’ will foster new innovations, Design Initiative brings together government, educational institutions, corporations and design firms to think about future scenarios and business opportunities.

Future Telling
Design Initiative has developed a ‘game-like’ method called ‘Future Telling’ in which participants from various backgrounds experience how design, as a discipline as well as a strategic tool can and should play a key role in innovation. “The future today, for business of tomorrow”
Strange Attractors was asked to design a publication that gives insight in the goals of the organization and the importance of the role of design in innovation. To illustrate the story we created a series of images dealing with fictitious future scenarios and made visualizations of the outcome of the very first Future Telling ‘game session’. One of the future scenarios dealt with the threat of global epidemics and the importance to prepare ourselves for such events. We decided to play in to this fear, and covered the publication with a strain of the H1N1/09 virus, responsible for the 2009 flu pandemic that was going on at the time of the release of ‘Future Telling’.